John Wadham, director of Liberty
"The tories want to lock up every asylum seeker until they prove they're not a terrorist. It's ill conceived and utterly illogical.

Tens of thousands of innocent people would be detained in the vague hope it may turn up a tiny handful of suspects; our security and intelligence services would be swamped in work yielding nothing instead of being able to target real threats.   "The plan ignores that fact that many millions of people enter the UK every year legally - on business, as visitors and so on. Are we to detain all of them until they're proven not to be terrorists? There is no logic in claiming these proposals tackle terrorism: they simply pander to xenophobia and the climate of moral panic that our politicians warn against but then promote.

"Mr Duncan Smith's shameless linking of asylum seekers, problems in the immigration system and the threat of terrorism cynically ignores the facts in favour of crude political bandwagonning"